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About Us

Business Overview

First Home Insurance Company (“FHIC”) currently underwrites homeowners insurance exclusively in the state of Florida.  FHIC was formed by Glencoe Capital, LLC (“Glencoe”) in May 2005 and commenced operations with the assumption of 24,880 policies from Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (“Citizens”), Florida’s state-run insurer.  FHIC completed two additional takeouts in June 2005 and August 2005, which provided FHIC with an additional 5,000 homeowners and dwelling fire policies.  FHIC is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida and led by W. Michael Lefler, a former founder and President of Florida Select Insurance Company.

In addition to FHIC, three other legal entities comprise the homeowners’ insurance organization established by Glencoe, including (i) First Home Insurance Agency, LLC (“FHIA”), a Florida-domiciled managing general agent that provides policy administration, marketing and other related insurance services to FHIC, (ii) First Home Financial Corporation (“FHFC”), an insurance holding company incorporated in Delaware (iii) First Home Acquisition Corporation, LLC (“FHAC”), a limited liability company organized in Florida that owns 100% of both FHFC and FHIA (collectively, FHAC, FHFC, FHIA and FHIC are the “Company”) and (iv) Glencoe Acquisition, Inc.   The following chart illustrates the organizational structure of the Company:

Organizational Chart

Transaction Overview

The Company has raised $29.0 million of financing to: (i) increase the capital and surplus of the FHIC to allow the Company to adequately diversify its portfolio in Florida, (ii) become licensed in and write homeowners insurance in non-correlated U.S. states like Hawaii, South Carolina and/or Texas to effectively leverage the Company’s reinsurance costs and (iii) finance general corporate infrastructure investments.  With the $29.0 million of equity financing, FHIC qualified for an opportunity to enhance the surplus by $14.5 million by securing a surplus note from the Florida SBA loan program.

Business Strategy

FHIC started writing new business in November 2007 and will be pursuing new business opportunities through a variety of means, including:

  1. Independent Agents – The Company will establish relationships with independent agents known by Mr. Lefler that will produce business for FHIC or expand its current relationships with agents that FHIC inherited through the depopulation process from Citizens.

  2. Acquisition of Books of Business from Existing Carriers – Certain larger existing Florida homeowners insurance companies have publicly declared their intent to reduce their new business writings within the State of Florida.  These larger carriers are willing to transfer policies from their existing portfolios to FHIC.  Smaller carriers that have sustained substantial erosion to their capital bases and may need to reduce their premium bases to avoid underwriting leverage issues, may also be interested in reducing their policy counts.

  3. Additional Takeouts from Citizens – To supplement its new business initiative, FHIC also plans to pursue takeouts from Citizens on an opportunistic basis.

  4. Expansion into Neighboring States – Another growth opportunity consists of diversifying the company’s risk profile by expanding into states such as Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas or California.  Several of these states are near the Company’s Jacksonville headquarters, yet less prone to catastrophic hurricane risk.

While the Company does plan to write new policies across the State of Florida, it is not targeting any particular area of the State for growth.  The Company will look to grow in areas of the State that will provide the Company with the greatest geographic diversification benefits.  The Company’s underwriting process will carefully monitor performance by zip code and policy type to determine the return on equity being generated from each segment.  This will allow the Company to make rate adjustments in order to enhance profitability and build an optimized portfolio.  The Company will maintain a strict inspection program and will inspect every policy within 60 days of the policy’s inception.